A Weblog by One Humble Bookman on Topics of Interest to Discerning Readers, Including (Though Not Limited To) Science Fiction, Books, Random Thoughts, Fanciful Family Anecdotes, Publishing, Science Fiction, The Mating Habits of Extinct Waterfowl, The Secret Arts of Marketing, Other Books, Various Attempts at Humor, The Wonders of New Jersey, the Tedious Minutiae of a Boring Life, Science Fiction, No Accounting (For Taste), And Other Weighty Matters.

Who Is This Hornswoggler?

Andrew Wheeler has worked in book publishing for 25 years. He spent 16 years as a bookclub editor (for the SFBC and others), and is now does marketing for Wiley. He was a judge for the 2005 World Fantasy Awards and the 2008 Eisner Awards. He also reviewed a book a day for a year (and he's doing it again now!). He lives with The Wife and two mostly tame sons (Thing One, born 1998; and Thing Two, born 2000) at an unspecified location in suburban New Jersey. He has been known to drive a minivan, and nearly all of his writings are best read in a tone of bemused sarcasm. Antick Musings’s manifesto is here. All opinions expressed here are entirely and purely those of Andrew Wheeler, and no one else.

Monday, January 07, 2013

Actually, what with Big Publishing being more-or-less closed last week (many of the houses officially close between Christmas and New Year's, and the ones that don't are generally ghost towns anyway), there was no mail from publishing companies for me.

I know -- what a calamity! It's so sad when the flow of completely free stuff is even slightly halted, and I'm sure several online review chappies are bitterly bemoaning those horrible, evil publishers right now, because they are complete morons who don't know how good they have it. Luckily, I am made of sterner stuff, and also have some perspective on the world.

So, instead, this week I'll tell you about a book that didn't come in the mail. As usual, there were some gifts coming into the Hornswoggler household that were surplus to needs -- as in, we already had them. Two were books for the estimable Thing 2, and another item was for me. Through the magic of exchange, Thing 2 and I went to a physical store -- yes, I know! like an artifact from a completely different era! -- and got new products, which we desired, to replace the duplicates.

And what I got is At the Mountains of Madness. It was adapted from the Lovecraft novella by I.N.J. Culbard, who also did the art. (Culbard is also an animation director, and, in comics, seems to specialize in adaptations from classic literature -- prior works include several Holmes stories and The Picture of Dorian Gray, all of which were written by Ian Edginton.) Mountains was published by Sterling -- a fine publishing company that was bought by B&N a few years back (and put up for sale abortively about a year ago) -- in February of 2012, after a prior edition from SelfMadeHero in the UK. I haven't really looked at it yet, but the cover is impressively moody, and the art inside looks solid in a classic British-adventure style.

Next week, with luck, will see more books -- but that's all on publishers deciding that they want to send me free stuff, and I hope I'll always be grateful for that. See you then.